Todd Dills

Truck stop chain CEO’s vacation home featured in ‘Traditional Home’

iBy land, sea or air/i could be the motto of Pilot Travel Center CEO Jimmy Haslam III. Not only does the truck-stop tycoon know a lot about trucking lanes, he also has a bird’s-eye view of one of American history’s great maritime centers. Featured in the June/July issue of iTraditional Home/i magazine, Haslam’s vacation home (pictured, with interior detail) rests atop a bluff on Nantucket Sound, where, in the 1700s, more than 125 ships docked regularly and the whaling industry helped make America a world power. Today Nantucket is renowned as one of the best places in the world to relax.Reported to enjoy antiques, Haslam and his wife, Dee, built the home three years ago with an eye to the island’s history and culture. “In a nod to the island’s nautical roots, window mullions and frames are painted black,” wrote Traditional Homes’ Amy Elbert. “‘Ships often had black window trim,’ explains Nantucket architect Scott Hutton. Interior doors are also painted black — a treament frequently seen in historic Nantucket homes.”

The view from the salt-air bluff includes cranberry bogs and a lighthouse on the Massachusetts island that has a population of only about 10,000. Haslam is said to recharge in the beauty of the home to get more work done (to add yet another bright yellow-domed fuel station to the nearly 300 already along interstate routes, perhaps) and visit with family and friends. Having founded Pilot in 1958, Haslam’s father, James Haslam II, told Overdrive that he came up with the name Pilot because it had “the feeling of strength and taking people where they needed to go.”

For more photos of the home on Nantucket Island, known as The Faraway Land to Native Americans, click here.

And super-sleeper customizers looking for perhaps lofty ideas might take a visit to Elizabeth Corker’s blog. Corker designed the interiors in the Haslams’ vacation home. –Lucinda Coulter

Todd Dills

Todd Dills is Senior Editor of Overdrive magazine and writes from Nashville, Tenn. He frequently covers business, regulatory and lifestyle topics for the magazine and at OverdriveOnline.com. His work on the “CSA’s Data Trail” series in Overdrive about the federal CSA program was awarded the highest honor in trade journalism – the “Grand Neal” – by American Business Media at the 2014 Jesse H. Neal Awards. Dills’ Channel 19 blog covers a grab bag of on-highway hearsay, owner-operator news and driver views from the roadways the nation over. His work in trucking journalism builds on a background of news feature, fiction and other creative writing and editing. Find him here at the Channel 19 blog and via his Twitter feed, or send tips to tdills@randallreilly.com or via phone at 205-907-2481.